‘Generation of school closings’ offers lessons on how to combat violence
Diligent work is being done in many critical areas to address Chicago’s alarming epidemic of violence, including programs such as the one former Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan is promoting.
However, the most effective remediation strategies generally require taking a hard look at all possible underlying causes of the problem, and so far little attention has been paid to the devastating impact on children, families and communities of the mass school closings carried out by Duncan and others between 2002-2017.
From the beginning, parents, students and community organizations raised an alarm about the many potential negative effects of Mayor Richard Daley’s so-called “Renaissance 2010” program, a plan to close and replace 100 schools with supposedly better charter and other privately run schools. Our protests continued as affected schools and neighborhoods became increasingly dangerous with little academic improvement.
In part as a result of these school closings, relationships between schools and families built over decades have been severed. Neighborhoods were stripped of what was often the only center of community life. Much of the glue holding the city together has dissolved. Unsurprisingly, hardest hit have been the communities of color on the West and South sides of the city, those areas experiencing today’s greatest number of violent incidents. Tens of thousands of children have fallen through the cracks. Just ask the shooters how many schools they attended before they gave up.
With nearly all of our public schools now shuttered due to COVID-19, student mental health, family well-being and community capacity are even more precarious. We would do well to look to lessons learned from that full generation of Chicago Public School closings for some strategies to address the schools we need going forward, especially when it comes to the great potential of strong schools to lower violence.
We can begin by embracing the research on lower class size, the “counselors not cops” movement and a social justice curriculum to address the wounds of trauma, loss and inequity.
Cities can vastly improve safety with public schools that are well-supported and stable. Chicago can make this happen.